Chapter Six #3
‘I don’t know, it doesn’t look too bad to me.
’ Ahmed had the worst crush on Zadie but, unlike Luna, he wasn’t exactly keeping quiet about it.
If anything, he seemed proud of the fact that he was in love with someone who didn’t love him back.
He loved to read and was always carrying books around.
The one he had now was called The Female Eunuch and he said it would help him to understand the female mind and convince Zadie to go out with him.
It was easier not to be around Emmett and Cadence when they were in a kissing mood (which was always), so Luna went to find Earl in his caravan. She wanted to show him her drawing.
‘Very interesting, Luna.’ He took the page from her and turned it around, looking at the sketch upside down.
He’d been making a cup of tea, so he got Luna one too and they took it and sat on the little floral couch where the light was better.
Even though it was warm, Earl was still wearing his blazer and the hat with feathers in the side.
Luna asked him once, when she was younger, why his hat was like that, and he just told her that he liked feathers.
‘You’re very talented, Luna,’ said Earl.
It made Luna smile. Earl was the best artist in the world in her book.
His muse was a man called Sebastian. He and Earl were madly in love for one summer in Paris decades ago.
It was the most romantic story Luna had ever heard.
Sebastian and their summer in Paris inspired loads of the stuff that Earl painted.
So if Earl liked her work, it was a massive compliment.
‘Thanks, Earl.’ She smiled. ‘I’m so glad that Mum let me take Art next year. It’s the only subject I’m looking forward to.’
‘Your teacher is lucky to have you.’
‘Tell me about your time at art school again?’ Luna settled back against the couch’s cushions. She didn’t glance out of the window. Or think of Emmett and Cadence in love and kissing on the beach below.
She didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to hear one of her favourite stories from Earl.
Earl had a sip of his tea. ‘Well, as you know, I was born in a village in Normandy. We were very poor.’
When he talked, you could tell that he had a French accent. ‘But I went to study art in Paris.’
‘Why did you pick Paris?’ Luna asked him.
‘Because there’s no more beautiful city in all the world than Paris, Luna. I was young and an artist and I wanted to fall hopelessly in love.’
‘So you moved to Paris and fell in love.’
‘I did, little Luna, with the city, with art, with Sebastian. The 1950s was a strange time. No more war, but things weren’t the same as they had been before, either.
I think some of us felt invincible, that we’d made it through the worst thing to have ever happened to the world.
We felt like nothing could touch us. I know I did. Of course, not everyone felt the same.’
Luna knew that it wasn’t okay for two men to go out back then, so Earl and Sebastian had to keep it a secret.
‘It’s so romantic,’ she told him, and he chuckled.
‘Yes, but in a tragic way.’
‘Very tragic.’
Sebastian disappeared after a single summer.
‘I’d like to go to Paris one day.’ Luna imagined Paris as full of life and colour, she wanted to see it for herself.
‘Then you will, Luna.’
Luna hummed an agreement and tried to picture herself in Paris. Emmett would be with her, of course.
‘Does it make you feel sad, the fact that you never really met anyone else?’ she asked.
‘A little, sometimes. But my life is very full. It makes me a better artist now. You don’t have to suffer to make beautiful art.’ Earl waved his hand around the caravan, which was full of art. Canvases, big and small, were piled up on the table, or else stacked against the kitchen cabinets.
Luna thought of her own art. How dark and gross it was this summer.
‘But a lot of famous artists had hard lives. And what if you want to draw like, awful stuff? Weirdly dark and gloomy stuff. Would you say that there’s anything wrong with someone who was drawn to that side of things?’
Earl chuckled and then had another sip of his tea.
‘Not at all. You notice what you notice; you are who you are.’
Luna thought that this was just great. Clearly, what she noticed were dark, slimy hearts. Or people who were neither dead nor alive.
‘I just wish that I noticed nice things.’
Earl took a drink of his tea. He was looking at Luna now; his eyes were very blue. ‘Beauty cannot exist without decay; the light is all the lighter set against the dark. Just because you feel drawn to the moon does not mean that you shun the sun.’
Luna thought that this was a very optimistic way of looking at things. A part of her still wanted to be drawn to the sun. She didn’t want to embrace darkness, not yet.
‘No, I suppose not.’
Luna looked out of the caravan’s window, down to the beach beyond. She imagined Emmett and Cadence down there, tangled up together like they always were.
‘Plus,’ Earl said, smirking at Luna from under his hat, ‘teenage boys are stupid. But we all become less stupid in time. That is all you need, little Luna. Time.’